Here’s an article in the NY Times about Miracle Fruit that was a cover story in the dining section today. Miracle fruit is a berry that, once eaten, changes your tastebuds for about an hour. Say you eat a lemon, it will taste like lemonade.

The article features one of my friends, Franz (who has blogged here before), who introduced me to miracle fruit through one of his miracle fruit tasting parties. It was like a food orgy. Franz rules and you should check out his project StreetWars (which I used to be apart of), the OG IRL watergun assassination game. It’s coming back to NYC this Summer.

I haven’t eaten a fresh tomato in eight months.

Sometimes the take-out places will try to sneak in halved grape tomatoes in my green papaya salad and I just eat around them. I see them in the supermarket and don’t even walk down their aisle. I omit them from recipes unless I can get away with using some canned San Marzano ones.

Tomato, I miss you. I will wait for you.

It’s totally gonna be like this.

If you stock up on cologne and Campari in your hotel room, Salma Hayek will totally let you rail her on the bathroom sink.

Sure, you can get purebred luncheon meats like ham or turkey. But olive loaf is an unholy alliance of bologna (snouts and asses pureed and put back together again– like Frankenstein but not as lonely) and green olives with pimentos. The result is a sweet, sweet forbidden fruit. And that is the money fruit. Er, money meat, in this case.

At work we started making our own dried sopresetta and chorizo (courtesy of Charcuterie and chemicals) and lamb flavored Slim Jim type dealies. I really want to figure out how to make olive loaf.

Here’s a haiku for my love:

Oh, my olive loaf
Soon you will be hip, trendy
NY Mag bloggings

Soon, my pretty, soon. 

You can tell someone is a restaurant cook just by looking at how fucked up their hands are. If you are an avid cook, then chances are you’ve hurt yourself doing it. Either with a knife or through heat. This isn’t through any lack of skill, shit just happens. And the more you cook, the more likely you are to fuck your shit up.

So, there are three things you can do with your knife: Stab (and in an out motion with the tip), slice (a back and forth sawing motion) and chop (and up and down motion as with an axe). Guess which method I used to break down this thumb?

If you guessed chop, then you are right. You know when you are dealing with an onion and sometimes you get a weird layer underneath the crispy skin and before the to-be-delicious flesh? A kind of leathery layer? Well my paring knife slipped of that layer and landed into my fingers (I got two fingers with one motion). This was on a Wednesday afternoon and I had to come up with multiple ways to keep it safe and clean for the rest of the work week, but still be able to use that digit.

Here are some products in my arsenal for minor mishaps:

Continue reading…

Being a grown-up means things like responsibility and jobs and taxes and cleaning up after yourself. It also means you can do whatever the hell you want. From eating chorizo, chippos and soda for dinner to staying up until four in the morning playing videos games to not being forced to go to church or piano lessons. And that’s fucking awesome.

It also means that you get to buy your own shit for your own place. No more plastic on flower printed couches and and stupid, ugly, useless chotchkeys. Shit like new dishes!

Matt and I went to Fishs Eddy on 19th and Broadway to get new plates, bowls and flatware recently.

We selected from The Diner Whites line, which are off-white, of restaurant quality (read: really heavy and sturdy) and has a large selection of shapes and sizes.

We got six each of large dinner plates ($6 each), lunch plates ($4.50 each), soup plates ($5 each) and cereal bowl ($6 each). We selected modern and heavy 18/10 stainless steel flatware, which cost $5 for each piece.

Fishs Eddy is located at 889 Broadway at 19th Street in Manhattan.

You should buy these dishes if you hate getting laid.

Kitchen knives are to me what wands are to witches and wizards in Harry Potter. Not every knife fits every person. You have to be comfortable holding your knife. Preferance for size, shape, weight, balance, metallic make-up all vary from cook to cook.

Really, for the home cook, you only need three knives: A chef’s knife, a paring knife and a serrated knife. And the latter two can be cheap–in price and quality. (And if, for some reason, you don’t eat fresh crusty bread, then you don’t even need the serrtated one.) Unfortunately this doesn’t apply to me, so I end up spending lots of money that probably seems ridiculous to you. But I do like sharp, shiny, pointy things.

I have recently purchased three new knives. I already posted on my new chef’s knife. The only problem with it, is that it’s too large to keep on my station at work during service. So I bought a utility knife which I use as a service knife to do little a la minute jobs–like chiffonade parsley, trim down protein portions and cut pasta sheets. It’s the same brand as my new chef’s knife (Kikuichi) and almost as expensive, but didn’t come with a wooden sheath. The manufacturer calls it a boning knife for some reason. Maybe this is a mistake in translation or maybe they like to make boning things hard for themselves in Japan. 6″ and is carbon steel sandwiched between stainless steel.

Next up is the Wusthof Cruster Buster serrated knife. The fucking this is a called a Crust Buster! It’s 10.5″ inches long and is shaped like a curved chef’s knife for maximum busting through of crusts with minimal effort. $60 with free shipping from Amazon.com. It pretty much rules.

Finally, we have the slicer. Used to, um, slice through meat. Called a sujihiki in Japanese. Using my chef’s knife to make pretty slices out of dozens of portions of meats a night was clumsy and awkward. Kinda like using a toilet wand to brush your teeth. As expensive and the same length as my chef’s knife (9.5″) and obtained from Bowery Kitchen. It’s fucking dreamy and cuts like a hot knife through butter. Using it brings a big shit eating grin to my face.

On knife care: It seems like everyone has an opinion on how to proper care for you knife: Some people hone it on steel before every use (which I don’t). Some people say to never use a diamond honer (which I do). Some people say to never use a honer and only use a sharpening stone (which I use once a week). I find it’s like masturbating–everyone has their own technique to get to the same end.

Alton Brown brings his knives (he is the spokesman for Shun brand) to a professional sharpener, which I was bummed to learn because he’s usually a big D.I.Y. guy.
Now I just have to figure out how to properly dispose of unwanted knives as it’s probably illegal to just leave them on my stoop like people do with clothes, books and old electronics. Anyone have any information regarding this?

As you may or may not know, I have an affinity for baby wipes. People may think it’s gross, but any arguement you have against them, I have a great defense supporting them. I don’t know why more people don’t use them. Why should babies be the only ones? I mean, those dudes don’t even know how to control their own bowels.

Anyway, Fairway decided to jack up the price on them. Which is fine, because I will pay for the luxury of them. But raising the price sixty fucking cents in two weeks?! Come on! That’s just some effed up ess, right there. I remember in high school when my local supermarket raised the price of Little Debbie’s Zebra Cakes by twenty cents and I went berzerker then, too.

In addition, Seventh Generation even changed the packaging slightly - making the baby a little more, um, whiter. I always thought that thing was a ginger halfie, which made me even more inclined to buy it because I was ginger when I was a baby. Now it’s juse some cracker baby taking my money.

Soon baby wipes will cost more than smokes.

But at least there aren’t naked children on a pack of Camel Lights.

I don’t like to eat too many processed foods - they make me feel icky. However, I do like my trashy bachelor chow type foods. Especially after dealing with fine dining cuisine all day. I can now understand how Hugh Grant, when going out with the hottest broad in the world just wanted some nasty sex from a dirty prostitute. So I was way stoked to find Annie’s mac ‘n’ cheese. It tastes exactly like Velveeta, except it’s doesn’t have any chemicals or ingredients you can’t pronounce. Today I made some for lunch and noticed the box was kind fucked up. I went to pour the pasta into the water and whatthefuck I get two cheese sauce packets! Whoa! It totally made my day.

Unfortunatly, it does not contain any rabbit meat. 

Xmas Day. I’m away with Matt at his family gathering in a suburb of Philly. My brother is staying at our apartment in Carroll Gardens, hanging out with the Xmas miracle known as Pokey. He sends me an early morning text message that says, “Your pepper grinder kicks so much ass you should name it Chuck Norris.”

Lo and behold, the Unicorn Magnum Plus Pepper Mill (voted best pepper mill by Cook’s Illustrated Magazine)! Expensive, yes, but it will last you for years and grinds like no other pepper mill. (Kinda like if you want to buy the ultimate cookware that will last three lifetimes, you buy copper and cast iron.) No constant fiddling with screws for desired coarseness. If you are serious about black pepper, then, fuck yeah, it’s worth it. If you think it’s retarded to spend that much on a pepper mill, then fuck you, you loser, you are shitty and I hope you are content with being mediocre for the rest of your life, making your mom cry out of disappointment.

Are you white dudes intimidated?